News, Views and More on ERHC Energy (OTC BB Symbol ERHE) from American Reporter Editor-in-Chief Joe Shea, an ERHE Investor

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas!

Just a short note to all of our readers to extend the best wishes of ERHC On The Move and Joe Shea to you for a happy, healthy, prosperous and safe New Year.

I have of course been following the sad path of ERHE as it has moved from $0.60 all the way back down to $0.11, where it seems - at least for now - to have finally found a bottom.

Is there hope for those of us with ERHE stock to make some money in 2009? It all depends on two things: whether we have any oil, and whether the price of oil continues to fall to historic lows in a Deprerssion-era scenario, or whether, as it has been accustomed to doing, rises as world economies back away from the precipice and begin to improve.

I think anyone can earn 20% or more on this stock in a few months. That would presumne you buy it now at $0.11, and hope that the Adan Abraham finally sails to the Gulf of Guineau for us.

I think it will also make money if Sao Tome & Principe decides to accept the lone, albeit free, explorer that is truly interested in its reserves - and has been since about 1996 - or successfully forecloses on our rights in the Sao Tome Exclusive Economic Zone by winning at arbitration.

The problem is, how much demand can there be for an oil company that has no oil to sell? And the answer to this question is what limits the upside of ERHE for the time being.

I suspect that we will see $0.14 before March 30, and that will be our forecast 20% gain. Selling it at that point may net you a few bucks if you have several hundred thousand shares - if you had 300,000 and got them at $0.11 for $33,000, and sold them for $0.14 or $42,000, it's good short-term money. But there may be much better buys out there, like Citigroup, Intel and others that might do far better (or far worse) at their current fire-sale prices.

Many investors have taken ERHE fgor a long, sweet ride, sucking in latecomers as the price collapsed, spitting them out as it rose. That tradition will undoubtedly coninue.

The hidden hand of Justice, i.e., the ongoing Justice Dept. Federal Grand Jury investigation of various bribery charges against ERHE, is always there to take back whatever better circumstances in the Gulf of Guinea may give.

While it surely appears that this investigation has been nixed, quite obviously the Department under Bush remains sufficiently dishonest to continue to do the bidding of Big Oil and withhold closure on the probe, knowing full well that doing so creates pressure on ERHE's principal, Sir Emeka Offor, to sell his holdings cheaply. The investigation, of course, has gone and is going absolutely nowhere, as we have told you from the beginning of it.

We are not impressed or overly concerned about corporate personnel changes. It doesn't appear that the personnel do anything, anyway, given that everything related to us remains in Limbo as well.

So my recommendation? Buy several hundred thousand shares, cash out by the end of March or even January, if you get your 20% - and wait for the next retreat.

About Me

... My greatest achievement was to win a First Amendment lawsuit (Shea v Reno) against Atty. Gen. Janet Reno over the First Amendment, in which I got a law declared unconstitutional in Manhattan Federal Court and was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
I've been a reporter almost all my life, and have worked at or published in publications like The Reader's Digest, Esquire, Argosy, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. I was a 1970 Pulitzer Prize nominee for my stories in the Village Voice, and am an investigative reporter who once got the President's nominee to the SEC withdrawn.
I'm also a native New Yorker who grew up on a farm in a small village that is now an important suburb of New York City. We still live in our pre-Revolutionary War family farmhouse there. I lived in Marietta, Ga., and Norman, Okla., as a kid, and went to the University of Oklahoma, Orange County Community College in Middletown, N.Y., and Antioch College in Columbia, Md.
I lived in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, Calif., for 26 years until moving to Bradenton, Fla., in 2003.